{"id":60868,"date":"2023-09-14T08:56:42","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T12:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/news\/california-is-poised-to-ban-caste-discrimination-not-everyone-is-happy-about-it\/"},"modified":"2023-09-14T08:56:48","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T12:56:48","slug":"california-is-poised-to-ban-caste-discrimination-not-everyone-is-happy-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=60868","title":{"rendered":"California is poised to ban caste discrimination. Not everyone is happy about it."},"content":{"rendered":"
When Prem Pariyar first came to the U.S. from Nepal in 2015, he got a job at an Indian restaurant in California and was assigned a room to live in by the restaurant\u2019s owner. But other workers didn\u2019t want to room with him, he said, because he is Dalit \u2014 the lowest-ranked caste, formerly known as \u201cuntouchable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard so many casteist slurs \u2014 words that dehumanized and insulted me,\u201d he said in an interview with MarketWatch this week. Eventually, he became homeless and had to live out of an RV van for a month, he said. <\/p>\n
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If Gov. Gavin Newsom signs a controversial bill that came out of Silicon Valley, California would become the first state to outlaw caste discrimination like the kind Pariyar says he experienced and witnessed at work, and then in higher education when he worked to get his graduate degree at Cal State East Bay in Hayward, Calif. Pariyar, now a social worker and a commissioner with the Alameda County Human Relations Commission, has testified on behalf of Senate Bill 403.<\/p>\n
SB 403, which cleared its final vote last week, would add caste as a protected class to the state\u2019s existing anti-discrimination laws. Caste, a social hierarchy constructed thousands of years ago in South Asia, is defined in the bill as \u201can individual\u2019s perceived position in a system of social stratification on the basis of inherited status.\u201d<\/p>\n
The California legislation follows a similar ordinance passed in Seattle earlier this year, as well as anti-discrimination rules including caste that are in place in the California State University system and some University of California campuses, due in part to Pariyar\u2019s advocacy. Other universities, such as Harvard University, have caste-bias protections in place for graduate-student workers. <\/p>\n
From the archives (February 2023):<\/strong> Seattle becomes first U.S. city to ban caste discrimination<\/p>\n
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, who represents a district that includes parts of Silicon Valley, wrote the legislation.\u00a0It has proven so contentious, especially among some Indian Americans who say it unfairly targets them, that the first-term Democratic senator is facing threats and a recall effort.<\/p>\n
After pressure from opponents, the bill no longer includes language stating that caste is \u201cpresent across South Asia and the South Asian diaspora.\u201d In addition, caste is now listed under \u201cancestry\u201d and not as its own category, as it originally was presented.<\/p>\n
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Wahab, who is Afghan American and was the first Muslim elected to the California state senate, told MarketWatch last week that she introduced the bill because of stories many people have told her about being negatively affected at work or hurt in other ways because of their caste. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are people who really do take advantage of their power and position and really harm other people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A 2016 survey of more than 1,500 South Asians living in the U.S. by Equality Labs, a civil-rights organization that advocates for ending caste-based oppression, found that 67% of Dalits reported experiencing unfair treatment in the workplace because of their caste. Four in 10 Dalit students reported experiencing caste discrimination in educational institutions.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the senator said she has been targeted with \u201cracist and bigoted\u201d attacks on social media because of the legislation.<\/p>\n
\u201cCarrying a civil-rights bill is no easy task,\u201d she said. Opponents of the bill are saying things like \u201cOh, she\u2019s Afghan, let\u2019s remember 9\/11,\u201d Wahab said.<\/p>\n
Tanuja Gupta, a former Google \n GOOG, \n +1.05%<\/bg-quote><\/p>\n
GOOGL, \n +1.01%<\/bg-quote> \n manager who quit her job at the company last year after a talk she organized for the company\u2019s employees on the topic of caste bias was canceled \u2014 and who eventually testified before the California Assembly Judiciary Committee in support of Wahab\u2019s bill \u2014 called the senator courageous.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she was so brave to take on this issue,\u201d Gupta said in an interview with MarketWatch. \u201cNot very many people would. Why rock the boat? Why risk [political] donors?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I am that evidence\u2019<\/h2>\n
Groups opposing the bill say existing California laws \u2014 the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act \u2014 provide enough protection against all types of discrimination. They also say Wahab\u2019s legislation targets American Hindus, whom they say are most closely associated with caste, though the bill does not mention any specific group.<\/p>\n
Pushpita Prasad, a board member of the Coalition of Hindus of North America, said in an interview that the definition of caste in the dictionary, and the way it is taught in schools, equates caste with Hinduism \u2014 and that therefore the legislation scapegoats practicing Hindus in the state, many of whom are Indian American.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bill will presume us guilty until proven innocent,\u201d Prasad said.<\/p>\n
Sudha Jagannathan, Prasad\u2019s fellow board member at CoHNA, also spoke with MarketWatch. \u201cI come from a so-called oppressed community,\u201d she said, referring to the Bahujan population. But she said she had lived in India, and then lived in the U.S. for 40 years, before learning her caste background. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was irrelevant in my life and networks,\u201d Jagannathan said. There has been more awareness of caste since the bill was introduced, she added, which she doesn\u2019t think is a good thing.<\/p>\n
Both Prasad and Jagannathan questioned the research and claims about caste discrimination by Equality Labs. They also said they don\u2019t want Indian-American employees to be asked about caste at work, or for children to be asked about caste in school. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis could traumatize students and subject them to bullying,\u201d Prasad said.<\/p>\n
But Pariyar, the social worker from Nepal, conducted research into caste-based discrimination among the Nepali diaspora living in the San Francisco Bay Area and found instances of social exclusion, workplace prejudice, microaggressions and housing bias among more than a couple of dozen Nepali Dalits in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opposition who are saying this bill is against the Hindu community, that\u2019s absolutely wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cI myself am Hindu \u2014 I am Hindu Nepali Dalit, and I have been experiencing discrimination. They never speak up for my safety.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pariyar added: \u201cThe opposition is saying there is no evidence [of discrimination against Dalits in the United States]. I\u2019m saying I am that evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n \u201c<\/span>\u2018The opposition argues that South Asians will be disproportionately affected by the accountability in this bill. That\u2019s analogous to saying that race-discrimination laws wrongly affect white people, or gender-discrimination laws wrongly affect men.\u2019\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p>\n
\n \u2014 Tarina Mand, a lawyer with the South Asian Bar Association of North America<\/span> \n <\/small><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Caste has determined access to educational networks and connections for generations, said Anupama Rao, a history professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, who has written a book about caste and is currently working on another. Caste has functioned to \u201corganize occupations, rituals, the religious, the legal, the political,\u201d Rao said. \u201cIt organizes sexual relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ancient Hindu texts describe the four main castes as Brahmins (priests and scholars); Kshatriyas (warriors); Vaishyas (merchants) and Shudras (laborers); with Dalits, falling outside the caste system, ranked lowest. Though India outlawed caste-based discrimination more than 70 years ago and Nepal banned it in 2011, advocacy groups and research say it has persisted in modern-day South Asia and beyond. India\u2019s National Crime Records Bureau last year reported there had been 50,900 cases of crimes against Dalits in 2021, a slight uptick over the previous year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a form of social capital and inherited privilege,\u201d Rao added, noting that she herself is from an upper-caste family. \u201cThe kinds of people who have typically tended to come to the U.S. have been upper-caste members. What [that has] tended to do is invisibilize caste.\u201d<\/p>\n
It can be \u201cdeeply uncomfortable\u201d for people to have to deal with the \u201couting\u201d of their caste, Rao said, as affirmative action in India has increased the caste diversity of immigrants to the U.S. over the years.<\/p>\n
The professor added that she finds the arguments of reverse discrimination \u201cdeeply ironic,\u201d saying opponents of the bill think that to \u201cgive people rights is actually a form of denying you yours.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time a group wants to demand rights, dignity and recognition, it produces tremendous anxiety in a social space that\u2019s organized around explicit and implicit practices of inequality,\u201d Rao said.<\/p>\n
The bill protects everyone whether they are from a higher or lower caste, Tarina Mand, a lawyer on the racial-justice task force of the South Asian Bar Association of North America, said during a news conference with Wahab last week after the bill\u2019s final passage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opposition argues that South Asians will be disproportionately affected by the accountability in this bill,\u201d Mand said. \u201cThat\u2019s analogous to saying that race-discrimination laws wrongly affect white people, or gender-discrimination laws wrongly affect men.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silicon Valley\u2019s increased focus on caste<\/h2>\n
Wahab said caste systems \u201cexist in every corner of the world\u201d and that there are Hindus who support the bill, including the group Hindus for Caste Equity. <\/p>\n
The state senator\u2019s constituents include Silicon Valley tech workers, many of whom are Indian Americans. Caste has gained more attention in the Bay Area tech center in recent years.<\/p>\n
When Gupta was still working at Google, she arranged for a speaker to come to the company to talk about caste bias. The speaker was Thenmozhi Soundararajan, the founder and executive director of Equality Labs, which has said it has received complaints about caste discrimination from many tech employees.<\/p>\n
At the time, Soundararajan told MarketWatch that since caste is a protected class in India but not in this country, U.S.-based tech workers with H-1B visas at companies like Google didn\u2019t have the same protections that they were used to having before they came to the U.S.<\/p>\n
According to four Google employees who spoke with MarketWatch last year around that time and asked not to be named out of fear of reprisal, there was \u201cdefensiveness\u201d from some employees at the company and claims that caste discrimination didn\u2019t exist in the U.S. So the talk at the company never happened, though Gupta and Soundararajan eventually posted the discussion they had planned on Google-owned YouTube.<\/p>\n
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\n \u201c<\/span>Opponents continue to protest SB 403, including by rallying in front of the California Capitol building last weekend.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Gupta, who was also\u00a0an organizer of the famous 2018 Google walkout\u00a0over the company\u2019s handling of sexual-misconduct allegations against executives, left the tech giant last year after it started an investigation of her conduct related to the aftermath of the talk\u2019s cancellation. The company also penalized her, a move she called retaliation and over which she filed a complaint against the company with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC is now investigating.<\/p>\n
A Google spokesperson said: \u201cCaste\u00a0discrimination has no place in our workplace and it\u2019s prohibited in our policy on harassment and discrimination, falling under national origin, ancestry, and ethnic discrimination.\u201d The spokesperson also said Soundararajan\u2019s planned talk was canceled last year because it \u201cwas pulling employees apart rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lawsuit brought by California\u2019s Civil Rights Department a couple of years ago accused two Cisco Systems \n CSCO, \n -0.20%<\/bg-quote> \n engineers of caste discrimination. The lawsuit against the employees was dismissed in April, but the department has said it continues to pursue its case against the company.<\/p>\n
A Cisco spokesperson said: \u201cThe California Civil Rights Department voluntarily dismissed the case alleging caste discrimination against two employees but not the lawsuit against Cisco. We have no comment on active litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advocates of SB 403, including Soundararajan, have gone on a hunger strike until the governor signs the bill. More than 100 advocates across the state are on hunger strikes, she told MarketWatch this week, adding that she is consuming only liquids and no solids. <\/p>\n
Of the opponents who question her research, religion and intent, Soundararajan \u2014 who said she was born Hindu and Christian but is now a Buddhist \u2014 said that \u201cthis bill doesn\u2019t affect an ethnicity, religion or a nationality.\u201d \u201cThe only people that this bill would target would be those who discriminate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Opponents continue to protest the bill, including by rallying in front of the California Capitol building last weekend.<\/p>\n
California\u2019s governor does not comment on pending legislation, a spokesperson said. The bill was officially presented to him on Monday, and he has 12 days from that date to sign, veto or take no action on the bill. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n